Why in the News
Why in the News
Recently, the rise of Zohran Mamdani as the Mayor of New York City in the United States has brought into sharp focus the prevalent lack of visibility of similarly elected civic officials in Indian cities, leading to a critical debate on the need for systemic change in urban governance.
- This discussion gains urgency from several administrative actions concerning urban local bodies:
- Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections are scheduled for 2026 after a lapse of several years.
- Twenty-seven municipalities in Telangana are being merged into the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC).
- Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike has been administratively divided into five corporations.
Background and Context
Structural and Historical Reasons for the Mayor’s Limited Role
- Chief Ministerial Supremacy: Structurally, the Chief Minister is regarded as the most powerful person controlling city affairs in India, contrasting with the period until the 1960s when Mayors were significantly more visible.
- Centralization of Decision-Making: The entire political system is organized around State Assemblies, consequently resulting in decisions about cities being taken in the Chief Minister’s office (peshi), not in the Mayor’s office.
- Historical Shift: During the Independence struggle, Mayors were highly visible, and several national-level politicians initially served as city Mayors; however, this prominence has since diminished.
- Urban Local Government History: Urban local government in India possesses a long history, predating the U.S., with the Madras Municipality being the oldest in South Asia, created in the 17th century as a nominated body where presidency towns had fairly empowered municipalities.
The Paradoxical Impact of Constitutional Amendments
- Deterioration Post-74th Amendment: Paradoxically, the situation of urban governance deteriorated even after the 73rd and 74th Amendments constitutionalized municipalities and corporations.
- Underlying Factors:
- Severe political competition is identified as a cause.
- Apathy of citizens is cited as a major contributing factor.
- Supply-Driven Decentralisation: Democratic decentralisation in India is regarded as a supply-driven reform measure, meaning it has not been demanded by the people, evidenced by the absence of parliamentary or State elections fought on the issue of strengthening or holding municipal elections.
Challenges in Responsive City Governance
Political Subordination and Financial Weakness of ULBs
- Subordination to Political Bosses: In many States, MLAs and MPs are made ex-officio members of the municipalities, which essentially reduces corporators and Mayors to subordinates of their bigger political party bosses.
- Restricted Functions and Revenue: Municipalities possess a very small revenue base and have very limited actual functions, with most civic work performed by other entities like bureaucrats and state-run agencies (parastatals).
- Failure of the 74th Amendment: The belief that the 74th Constitution Amendment would solve these issues failed because the Amendment ignored and bypassed the political reality.
- Citizen Ignorance: Urban people are seen as fairly ignorant about the nitty-gritties of government, with insufficient recognition of the local government as a government, leading to indifference towards demands for strengthening it.
Administrative Restructuring and Malafide Intentions
- Postponement of Elections: Administrative changes, whether unifying civic bodies into a big bloc (Hyderabad) or dividing them into manageable blocs (Bengaluru), are viewed as malafide justifications intended to create a fait accompli and ensure that elections can be postponed.
- Circumventing Judicial Review: Politicians are found to use delimitation as a tactic to neutralise courts, which would otherwise be outraged and enforce the conduct of elections.
- Territory Management: The expansion, contraction, division, and subdivision of city administrations are primarily interpreted as territory management by the Chief Minister’s office or the Assembly, and not as measures for governance or ease of governance.
- Delhi’s Structural Disaster: The case of Delhi is cited as a huge disaster where the political space was not decluttered, resulting in a State-like structure with a Chief Minister compressing a municipal system in the same space, where actions were sometimes taken with purely malafide intentions to harass political opponents.
Way Forward for Decentralized Governance
- Demand-Side Advocacy: Making the governance of Indian cities more responsive is contingent upon the people demanding it, which is essential as politics responds to public demand for strengthening local governments and local corporations.
- Reducing State Overreach: The priority should be less about making the Mayor more powerful and more about cutting back the power of the Chief Minister’s Office over city administration.
- Financial and Decision-Making Decentralization:
- Financial allocations need to be decentralised, including transferring monies to the ward level to ensure ward offices secure the funds they need.
- Local-level decision-making structures must be in place, otherwise power devolution will not happen even within municipal budgets.
- Redesigning Governance: It is imperative to acknowledge the political reality of cities and redesign things in each city, in each State, instead of imposing a uniform solution.
- Institutional Clarity and Parastatal Reform:
- Clear delineation of roles and responsibilities is required to fix the complicated mechanisms that currently control everything.
- It is extremely important to ensure that parastatals do not become excessively big and powerful autonomous agencies; fixing these issues is key for the Mayor to become visible and the municipal system to become active.
Conclusion
- Indian urban governance trapped in Chief Minister dominance, invisible Mayors, financially starved municipalities, parastatal overreach, election delays via restructuring, and citizen indifference has rendered cities unaccountable despite 74th Amendment promise, as evidenced by Bengaluru/Hyderabad/Delhi experiments and Zohran Mamdani contrast.
- Holistic transformation demands citizen-led demands, power devolution, financial autonomy, institutional clarity, and political reality-aligned reforms to elevate local governments as empowered democratic hubs addressing urban challenges effectively.
UPSC MAINS PYQs
- Lack of financial resources and independence in managing local funding is hindering the economic and social development of urban areas. Discuss. (2024)
- “The financial suitability of the Urban local bodies can become a reality only when they receive their due share of public finances.” Explain. (2022)
- Contemporary urbanism advocates the integration of diverse modes of urban planning and management concerns. Discuss the above statement in light of urban development in India. (2021)
- Urban local governance is perpetually afflicted with lack of financial autonomy and starvation of funds. Elaborate. (2020)
- “The disempowerment and depoliticization of urban local government has happened in multiple ways.” Comment. (2018)
